1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a novel optical element, an optical modulating device and an optical modulating method.
2. Description of the Prior Art
At present, cathode ray tubes (so called CRT) have been widely utilized for terminal display devices in various kinds of instruments for offices and instruments for measurements or display devices in televisions or monitoring for video cameras. However, this CRT, remains unsatisfactory in that it has not yet reached the level to the extent of a hard copy by use of silver salt or electrophotographic method in respect to image quality, resolution and displaying capacity. Also, as a substitute for CRT, attempts have been made to utilize practically a dot matrix display with liquid crystal, namely the so called liquid crystal panel. Again, such a liquid crystal panel has failed to give satisfactory results with respect to drivability, reliability, productivity and durability.
Liquid crystal has been also utilized for optical switching element, but it is generally slow in response speed. Improvement of this drawback is possible only by choice of a limited species of liquid crystal. Yet such a limited species is poor in availability for general purpose, because of the problem inherent in liquid crystal itself that the temperature employed is limited. Under the present situation, no optical element and optical modulating device which overcome the above problem has yet been obtained.